Okay Geek Farm
Remembering the Sega Channel
Ricardo Trejo
Sometime in the mid 1990’s Sega teamed up with a handful of tv cable companies and brought my elementary school self, and countless other children, the wonders of having access to upto 50 games on my Sega Genesis, all via an adapter that fit snuggly on the console’s slot and connected to a cable box. All I can remember of those times are sparkles and glitter, oh and Comix Zone.
What’s So Special?
The year was 1994, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was making its way across the globe, and like so many gamers of the time the only means to keep the gaming addiction at bay was the weekly visit to Blockbuster. That was until I saw an ad from my local cable company, Prime Cable at the time, talking about some black magic device that somehow combined the power of cable tv (another childhood addiction of the 90’s) and the blast processing of the Genesis, which would give my siblings and myself countless games to play through for only a monthly fee of $14.99.
There was little resistance to the idea especiall since Nick Arcade’s Phil Moore was also on the ad promoting the service! Heck, I even remember the argument I made to my parents about how we’d save money by going the Sega Channel route instead of coming and going to Blockbuster each week. And once we did get it, it was a magical experience. There was a mountain of games to choose from; Contra Hard Corps, Power Rangers, and Road Rash just to name a few. Dude, I still remember spending my saturdays whoopin’ fools on their bikes in Road Rash or just chillin’ out with my alien boys, ToeJam and Earl.
Aside from the main line up there were also demo’s (called test drives), as well as exclusive content for games that were never released within the USA; games like Pulseman and MegaMan: The Wily Wars. At the end of each month some games were switched out to make room for newer titles and demo’s. The “test drives” themselves were quite interesting as they were put on a time limit, and I still remember trying to get as far as I possibly could on Comix Zone before the 15 min’s ran up. Going back to the end of the month thing, it goes without saying that my brothers and I would stay up until midnight on those nights just to see what was coming up for the next 30 days.
The Lasting Effect
I’m not sure why we ended up canceling our subscription but it probably had something to do with the N64 coming out, but that’s just an assumption. According to Wikipedia, the Sega Channel was up and running up until 1998, 4 years after it first launched. Though some articles I’ve found on the subject speak on how it hurt the company, but at the time it was completely unbeknownst to us kids — heck, we had no knowledge of market share, let alone that the Sega Saturn was about to change the way we thought about cartridges. But as for me all I can remember are fond memories of Sega in all its glory seriously doing what Nintendon’t.
